Pridie Idus Quintilibus adsumus. From the calendar, "... I pray to You, Apollo, inventor of music and of all the healing arts, come to my aid and this undertaking, bless it with Your laurel." (Ovid Remedia Amoris 75-76) The day is Comitialis: Comitia yes, Courts yes.

The Fora are mostly empty, but the Sun (Sol iam Invictus) shines brightly this Summer.

I also pray to you, Apollo, that your Immortal Spirit come preside over our gathering, that you invest us again with your broad, inventive, Summery spirit.

The toils and coils turn and twine amid the Furor Vitae, but for me it remains that from this a Living Peace should be drawn (ex qua mihi Pax Vivens extrahenda manet).

So how are things in Louisiana for you then? Did you just pick up and go, and start looking for work? Or did you have friends down there to stay with? Just curious; my days of "picking up and going" are pretty much behind me, at my age - it's my kids' turn now.

I have not gotten back to Rome Total War for weeks. (I fear I'm really not much of a gamer.) And, of course, when I was playing, I was still in tutorial stage, really. Maybe I can get my sorry self into training again tonight; I have an Empire to defend! (I started with the Barbarian invasion stage.)

LA sucks. It's too hot, too humid, not enough starbucks, the internet connnection sucks, the car insurance is twice as expensive as it was in MA. I can't wait to get out of here. This situation is temporary, hopefully.

In late April I got offlined for a week by a corrupted network adapter. I came back to people saying that we were too P.C., that the magistrates were harrassing/being harrassed by Formosus...people editing, people deleting, people being profane, people being banned...and then the same Formosus, who I had considered a friend, vandalising the Forum on his way out.

Earlier that month we somehow managed to convince a distinguished visitor and old friend of mine, Ursus from UNRV, that we were just another Roman forum after all, and one not very far removed from Nova Roma either.

Oh, and Scerio/Poplicola, to whom I owed a renaissance of my Romanitas a few years ago, saw fit to shake our dust off his caligae too. Apparently we weren't Nova Roman-*enough* for him.

Yes, Marii - sorry about all the drama. But that's why I started this thread - to see where we are after the whole Poplicola-Formosus mess. I decided that the cloud had passed, that all that is over, that misfires and misfortune ( ) are not the whole story here.

Na, we don't have one-ten-thousandth the shenanigans that they do over there. (An old-timer once said in the Comitia that we're so civil, we're boring.) But that we could be compared with NR at all in some other way than by stark contrast--that we could even have an uproar to compete with theirs--makes a bad joke of our origins, our heritage and our mission. What origins, what heritage, what mission? --Nobody seems to know anymore, and few of us even try to teach them. The sense of societal cohesion we had here, even as recently as last year when so many of you saw me through the Cub crisis, has seemingly vanished.

In 2008, for the Feriae Latinae gathering in Austin, NR officialdom was a big fat no-show. Why? --Because "the Roman Republic Reborn" had had another one of its periodic nervous breakdowns, this time featuring two close friends of mine who got on opposite sides of an issue there. One cancelled out when he learned that the other one was coming. Turned out the other one couldn't make it either. For most other prospective attendees, there was not enough time to plan...because we held back the announcement until the Pontifices could officially announce the dates for the Feriae. We broke away from Nova Roma eight years ago (nobody noticed the anniversary this year)...and we are still being affected by the general bullshittiness of the place.

On the plus side, we've gotten a lot of fine, friendly and active Sodales from within their ranks. Okay, so one or two of us have been sucked into the abyss, perhaps in exchange. Even so, the NR ex-patriates here will probably be the ones who save my sense of purpose and what's left of my morale.

> btw, I'm in Louisiana now, so is there a way to change it on the member's list?

Done. Will this be a temporary or a permanent thing?

I update the Album Sodalium when we get a new member; when a member notifies me that their info (Roman name, residence) has changed; and when someone receives an honor, such as being elected or appointed to an office or being granted Equestrian or Patrician rank. New members have to show up on the Board before I will add them to the Album. Before today, I last updated it in late May. All members are encouraged to check the Album to make sure their listing is correct and up-to-date.